Rama Awakened by the Gods and Lakshmana's Cremation

Sugriva and the other kings beg Rama to cremate the Vasudeva's body, but the words strike him as an insult and he angrily tells them to burn their own mothers, fathers, sons and grandsons: their kin may die, but why should his brother? Calling on Lakshmana to leave these wicked people, he lifts the body onto his shoulder and walks away, trusting no one, with Vibhishana, Sugriva and many kings following behind; like a child who will not give up a poisonous fruit, he will not let the body go.

Telling Lakshmana it is time for his bath, Rama seats the body on the bathing throne, bathes it from jewelled golden pitchers, dresses it in a crown and every ornament, and orders servants to bring rich dishes in vessels of gold and gems, dal, rice, flatbreads and many delicacies, to nourish his brother. He puts morsels into Lakshmana's mouth with his own hands, but they are not taken, just as an abhavya (a soul incapable of liberation) never takes in the Jina's teaching; Rama pleads that even if Lakshmana is angry with him he should not be angry with food, and should at least drink some milk, but the body takes nothing.

Gautama tells Shrenika that the wise and learned Rama, bound by affection, serves his dead brother as one serves the living: he has songs played on the vina and flute, rubs the body with sandal, oils and perfumes, lifts it, hugs it, strokes its face and asks whether some goddess of sleep has seized him. Gripped as if by a planet of affection, the Baladeva goes on like this, so that even in death Lakshmana does not leave Rama's side.

News spreads through every town and village that Lakshmana, lord of the three khandas (regions), is dead, that Lavana and Ankusha have become munis and that Rama has lost his reason through delusion. The son of Sunda, Shambuka's brother, goes to Vajramali, son of Indrajit, and stirs him up: Lakshmana killed his uncle Shambuka and his grandfather Kharadushana, Patala Lanka was taken from them and given to Viradhita, Sugriva betrayed his master to join Rama, Rama ravaged the Rakshasa island, and the two brothers, armed with the Simhavahini and Garudavahini vidyas (magical sciences), captured Indrajit and Kumbhakarna and killed Ravana with the discus.

Now that Lakshmana has fallen to the wheel of time, he says, the Vanaras who grew bold on his strength are helpless, and Rama, though no warrior on earth equals the bearer of the plough and pestle, has wandered mad with grief for eleven fortnights, now into the twelfth, carrying his brother's corpse, so this is the moment for revenge. Sounding the war drums, Sunda's son and Vajramali march on Ayodhya with a great army, planning first to kill or capture Sugriva and seize his land and then to fight Rama.

At the news, all the Vidyadharas and the kings and people of the three khandas loyal to Rama crowd into Ayodhya, as they did when Lavana and Ankusha came, and Rama marches out with Lakshmana on his shoulder and bow and arrows in hand. Meanwhile in the fourth heaven the seats of two gods tremble: the soul of Kritantavaktra, now a lord among the gods, and the soul of the bird Jatayu, who serves under him. Jatayu's soul is angry because Rama, who raised him like a son and recited the Namokara mantra (the salutation to the five supreme beings) to him at death, is now stricken with grief and beset by an enemy army.

Learning everything through avadhi jnana (clairvoyant knowledge), Kritantavaktra's soul recalls that Rama, his master in his past life, loved him more than brothers or sons, and that he had promised to come to Rama in any time of trouble. The two gods fly to Ayodhya in a vimana (aerial chariot); Jatayu's soul takes the form of a Kamadeva and fills the enemy with illusions of impassable mountains, sky-high walls and a boundless city teeming with gods and Vidyadharas, until the terrified army sees no road of escape, and then he shows them a path to flee south.

The enemy flees for its life, and Indrajit's son, ashamed to face King Vibhishana and the world, becomes a muni under the sage Rativega together with Sunda's son and the other Vidyadharas. Jatayu's soul visits these new monks, tells them the whole story, asks their forgiveness and returns to Ayodhya.

To awaken Rama, who behaves like a child in his grief, the two gods stage a series of absurd acts before him: Kritantavaktra's soul waters a dead tree and churns water to make ghee, while Jatayu's soul ploughs with a pair of dead oxen, sows seed on a rock and presses sand in an oil mill. When Rama calls them great fools, they ask what use it is for him to carry his brother's corpse about, and Rama, clasping Lakshmana, angrily warns them not to speak ill-omened words about the Narayana, lord of three khandas.

While Rama argues with Kritantavaktra's soul, Jatayu's soul comes before him carrying a human corpse, and when Rama asks why he carries a dead body, the gods reply by asking why Rama, so wise, carries the lifeless body of Lakshmana. He sees the speck of fault in others but not his own fault as large as Meru; like is drawn to like, and they, the flag-bearers of madmen who do pointless things, have come to him because he is the greatest madman of all. At these words the eighth Baladeva is freed from delusion; recalling the scriptures and his gurus' teaching, he emerges like the sun from the clouds, his mind as clear as an autumn sky.

Rama rejoices like a traveller lost in the night who finds the road at sunrise, a starving man given food, a thirsty one who finds a lake, a sick one who finds medicine or a prisoner set free, and feels he has been born anew out of the blind well of samsara (the cycle of rebirth). Human life, he reflects, is as fleeting as a dewdrop, won with great difficulty after wandering through the four states of existence, and he has wasted it: whose brother, whose son, whose family, wealth or wife, when the soul has had countless families and only true knowledge is rare?

The two gods then withdraw their illusion and reveal the splendour of heaven, with cool fragrant breezes, a sky full of celestial vimanas, dancing goddesses and the music of vina and flute. Asked what happiness he found in all his years of rule, Rama answers that there is no happiness in kingship and that only those who leave it to become munis are happy; when he asks who they are, Jatayu's soul tells how, as the vulture, he took vows when Rama fed the sages, was raised by Rama like a son, fought Ravana when Sita was carried off and, hearing the Namokara mantra from Rama as he lay dying, was reborn in the fourth heaven, where heavenly pleasures had kept him from coming sooner.

Kritantavaktra's soul reminds Rama that he was once his commander, treated like a son and a brother, and that when he renounced the world Rama had asked him, should he become a god, to come and protect Rama in a time of trouble. Rama hails the two mighty gods of the fourth heaven as his supreme friends and, now free of grief, cremates Lakshmana's body on the bank of the Sarayu river. He tells Shatrughna that he means to take muni vows and seek siddhahood and that Shatrughna should rule and protect the people, but Shatrughna replies that he has no wish for pleasures, that only the attached should rule, and that he will take the Jina's vows with Rama, since no one has ever been satisfied by pleasures, friends and kin.